Songwriting Worskshop tips

On Sunday I drove into camp Sunnystones to take a workshop on songwriting.
On arrival, the hostess with the mostest, Steph Payne, informed me that some singers were excited about doing a songwriting workshop, and others were…less than excited. Okay, maybe daunted.

Once we were all settled, we started diving into our senses with some timed writing exercises. The goal was to become aware of all our senses.

The group’s self-described experience ranged from ‘never’ having written a song, to writing ‘crappy’ songs- or the cousin of the song….the poem.

And there we plenty of moments of brilliance- our word, ‘butter’ gave us ‘the colour of egg yolks and daffodils’, ‘slippery butter pooling in the bread’ and evoking ‘Grandma’s kitchen.’

The was also enough ordinary* (read- sucky) writing that some people frowned at their page. But writing, to me, is about creating a lot of work- creating a bunch of words and phrases that may be, for the most part- very ordinary. But we’re mining for diamonds, or nuzzling around in the mud like a truffle pig. And we’re just looking for surprising moments; images and phrases that stand out from the mud of our inevitable ‘ordinariness’.

This choir was up for anything. We warmed up their voices and did a couple of improvisation exercises where they created their own songs without even realising it.

By the end of the session we had two song starts of a verse, a chorus, and enough laughs that I hope to hear the finished songs soon!

This photo is from a worksheet of a song I’m working on at the moment 🙂